Death Whispers
by ExcessivelySesquipedalian
Summary: A remote village in the 51st century is haunted by a mysterious whispering light, and anyone outside at night dies. But while others hear the whispers of death, one boy hears beautiful music... First in Tales From the TARDIS Archives
1. One

**This is the prologue thingy for my first ever full story on here. It's a little dark and odd, but please keep reading!**

CHAPTER ONE- Night Terrors

Cail looked up at the sky, and fretted as he saw how dark it was. He wiped the sweat from his brow and turned to his brother Michael, who stood a short ways across the field, pulling ripe fruit from the plants and placing them carefully in his basket. Cail bent to the work again, harvesting the crop that was his town's only hope to make it through the winter, but he constantly glanced up at the heavens and then over at Michael. Finally, he turned to his brother, and asked his question.

"Shouldn't we get inside, Michael? It's getting awfully close to nighttime. Haven't we picked enough for now?" His eyes twitched nervously back and forth, searching for some lurking danger.

The older brother shook his head resolutely. "No. The forecast says rain, and the rest will never make it through a thunderstorm. We risk starving if we can't get this last bit."

"But we're in the farthest field! We'll never make it back in time if we don't start back now. I'd rather starve than be left out here in the night. We can try requesting government aid if we can't harvest enough-"

Michael laughed bitterly. "Don't you think we've tried? We're just one lonely outpost out of many here in the boonies. They're not interested in helping us. They're out there in their biocities, flying around in their cars and laughing while we starve out here. No. We'll risk it, for everyone waiting back home."

Cail started to respond, but suddenly a noise came from the woods, and both brothers turned, terror stricken, to the darkness beyond the fields. It was a quiet noise, like a hoarse whisper too soft to be comprehended, or the rustling of autumn leaves in the wind. The blood drained from Cail's face, and he began to babble.

"No! No! I told you! I'm not going to stay here! I'm not going to wait here and die! It's coming!" He turned and ran, as fast as he could. His brother didn't linger, leaving his precious baskets behind him in the early autumn mud. They fled from the strange rustling whisper, stumbling and tripping over dips in the ground and flinging themselves over fences as they passed from field to field of the farm, trampling the plants as they went in utter disregard of the fruit that lay upon them.

Michael glanced at the purpling sky, and urged his brother on. "Come on!" he shouted, "It's not all dark yet! The sun hasn't set! We can still make it!" Cail didn't waste his breath on a reply- he only ran faster.

Meanwhile, the whisper was building, now like a thousand rasping voices or the sounds of an entire forest in a gale. At the same time, a pale light began to shine through the trees in the wood. It was the color of moonlight on old Earth, but as it steadily grew stronger, it became whiter and whiter, brighter and brighter, until every terrified glance the brothers shot at it left spots on their vision and made them stumble blindly across the ground.

Finally, they crested the final hill and Cail cried out in triumph. Ahead of them sat a little farming town, its buildings dark and empty except for a long, low common building in the center of the radiating streets. Rays of golden light shone from its windows, and from floodlights set all around it. They had a last desperate rush of speed, now that their safety was in sight.

But just as they spotted the longhouse, the last sliver of sun inched below the horizon and left the world in darkness. With a _whoosh_ the light rushed toward them, as if, freed by the nightfall, it had broken from the trees. The whispers reached fever pitch, now more of a roar than anything, and the two men ran as fast as they could toward the shelter of the house, while the light sped closer and closer.

They almost made it. Michael had always been the more athletic of the two, and had reached the door of the longhouse and began pounding upon it. Cail was thirty feet behind, the light catching at his heels, when he tripped on an old iron pipe, half buried in the bare earth around the longhouse. As rescuing hands dragged Michael inside, he caught one last look at his brother's face as the light blotted him out, spotted his look of abject terror as the pseudo-steel door slammed on the night.

Cail, flat on his back, saw the light separate into floating globes, will o' the wisps of radiance. For a second, he forgot what he knew about the light and was enchanted by their beauty. The whispering filled his ears, almost soothing. One lovely light floated down, shimmering above his chest with a wavering light, a myriad of whispering voices echoing from within it, as if someone was trapped within it but impossibly far away. He could almost catch snatches of the words the voices spoke…

Then the light touched him, and he gave a terrible, wrenching scream as his veins, his very being filled with fire. With that scream, Cail died, there in the whispering light.

Michael sobbed as he heard his brother die, banging the metal wall of the longhouse and cursing his survival while the other people inside looked at him with bleak faces, neither pitying nor envying him.

Outside, the light paled but did not disappear, the initial roaring faded to a whisper again, as the night wore on outside the little building, full of death.

**Death Whispers is the first in a series of full-episode style stories I'll be writing, entitled Tales From the TARDIS Archives. I'm hoping that you guys will like them :) I'll update whenever I finish a chapter, which should be frequently because if I don't write my younger sister Hannah will murder me...**

**Next chapter has Doctor! And winged space elephants.**


	2. Two

CHAPTER TWO- A Lonely World

"So after the Empress had me sentenced to death, I was placed in a cage on the top of the citadel tower, to wait for my execution. However, I discovered that the cell was made of aerdalcium, which dissolves in contact with saliva- and actually tastes quite a bit like raspberries. By licking my prison all throughout the night, I was able to escape by climbing down the palace walls and make contact with the resistance, who helped me overthrow the monarchy and recover the TARDIS from the treasury," the Doctor explained, spinning in the chair by the TARDIS console, steepling his fingers and looking over them at Rory's incredulous face.

"You know," he said, shaking his head," I never know whether you're telling the truth or making it all up as you go along."

"Oh, he hasn't even gotten to the bit with the winged space elephants yet," Amy Pond chuckled from the other side of the time rotor, crossing her arms and leaning on the railing.

"Wait, what?" Rory said, spinning to face his wife. The Doctor didn't get to explain, however, as a blaring blue light began to go off overhead, along with an alarm.

"Not again," Amy muttered as the ship began to lurch back and forth, and with a ping airplane oxygen masks popped off the ceiling and dangled around their faces as they were thrown around the console room. "What is it this time?"

"I think it's a malfunction in the cooling vents," the Doctor shouted over the screaming of the alarm. "If I could just flood the heat dump with the air from the infrazero generator-"A huge swing sent him into the wall with a massive CRACK in the middle of his task, and he slumped to the floor, motionless.

"Doctor!" Rory shouted, barely hanging on himself. He ducked under the console and tore loose a first aid kit that he had duct taped there, being a sensible person who knew the sort of things that happened around the Doctor, and as soon as the lurches paused, he flung himself across the floor to the Doctor's limp form, grabbing onto him as Amy began, in her panic, to hit random buttons on the console.

"Work, damn you!" She shouted. "Do something!"

A message flashed up on the screen. _Gyroscopes disabled,_ it read. _Warning: excessive turbulence may result._

"Aagh, no no no no no no no!" Amy yelled, as true to its word the ancient, groaning machine began to throw itself even more violently from side to side.

Rory had locked himself into the railing with his knees and one elbow, and was examining the Doctor. He had a large gash across his forehead, which was bleeding profusely, and didn't respond to Rory's frantic attempts to wake him. However, when he opened the first aid kit, he had no idea what the contents were.

"That's what I get for using his kit…"Rory groaned.

"Is he alright?" Amy asked.

"No!" Rory answered as the noise continued. "He's out cold- with a knock like that he may have a concussion. We need to get him out of here before we all get shaken to pieces!"

"But only he can fly the TARDIS! How do we land it?"

"Gimme a minute!" Rory replied. He pulled a likely-looking object from the case, what looked like a roll of bandages labeled INSTANT SKIN. He turned it over and discovered instructions on the back. He tore a strip off and placed it across the Doctor's forehead, waited fifteen seconds, and removed it to find that the gash was barely visible and closed, although his face was still a bloody mess.

The nurse was jolted back and forth as he wedged the Doctor into the corner, rationalizing that he couldn't help him while he was being shaken like a can of spray paint, and made his uneasy way across the console room. Rory scanned the consoles, trying to remember as well as he could. His eyes came to rest upon a lever he had seen the Doctor throw for an emergency stop before- or was it the one next to it?

"Hurry up!" Amy shouted as she lost her grip on the controls and was flung onto the floor.

Rory reached out and pulled the lever before he could think better of it. The ship lurched one more time and was relatively still- although it was tilting at an alarming angle. The Doctor's body was dislodged from the rail and slid across the floor towards him, and he pulled himself over to catch his unconscious friend before he smacked into the console.

"We have to get him to somewhere we can get him treated," Rory said.

"But we have no idea where we are," Amy reminded him. "We've stopped, but we could be in the middle of a sun, or the middle of a war, or the middle of nowhere."

However, the screen consented to display one more message. _Emergency coolant venting necessary. Please exit capsule as soon as possible and do not return until radiation levels return to species safe levels._

"Figures," Amy grumbled. "The one time that screen says anything in English and it's booting us out."

Rory slipped down to the door, and opened the left one to peer outside. He stepped out and disappeared for a second. Amy waited worriedly for a minute, until abruptly the ship jolted and straightened out. She dragged the Doctor over to the door and then stepped through.

It was twilight, and on an Earthlike world on the shore of a gunmetal gray sea. She stopped and stared for a second; there wasn't a single living thing in sight, and the endless, tossing gray waves held a sort of wild, bleak beauty that she couldn't tear her eyes away from immediately. The air was not exactly salty; it had a strange, fresh, but not altogether pleasant scent to it, like spearmint with a tint of sulfur. And it wasn't the kind of mint smell that candies have, it was a real, crisp scent that Amy had smelled before in a friend's herb garden, when she had crushed a handful of mint leaves in her palm and inhaled deeply. Regretfully, she looked away from the sea.

The TARDIS had apparently landed crookedly on the ridge caused by the high tide, so that one side was about two feet higher than the other; however, you could only tell because of the large scrape marks in the yellow-gray sand where Rory had apparently pushed it off the rise.

Glancing around, Amy spotted Rory fifty feet off, surveying the landscape from a hill. Joining him, she saw in the opposite direction of the sea a small town, surrounded on three sides by fields. In the distance, she could just make out the dark line of a forest beyond the farms.

"Do you think they could help us there?" she asked Rory.

"It's our best chance," he answered, turning back to the TARDIS. "And anyway, we seem to be in a hurry, otherwise I'd never try to move him that far without some sort of neck brace."

While Amy went to their bedroom for a sheet, Rory rummaged around in the space under the glass deck until he found a pair of metal poles about eight feet long. He hauled them awkwardly up to the door where the Doctor was lying. Rory attempted to wake him again, not relishing the idea of carrying the tall alien all the way to the town, but he didn't respond.

Amy reappeared with a bedsheet, muttering something about how inconsiderate it was of him to go and get himself knocked out, and how was she supposed to get him all the way over there across all that sand and mud when it would presumably be dark soon, and in this short skirt too.

"Well, you could put something else on," Rory chuckled.

"No, I like this skirt," Amy said. "It makes people stare at me any time before the seventies."

Rory took the fabric, which Amy had obligingly ripped up on her way down, and the two of them fashioned a sort of stretcher that they hauled the Doctor onto. This immediately sent the Scot, who had been having a rather bad day, into a fresh round of complaints about having to carry him all the way across the field.

They picked the stretcher up and maneuvered it out the doors, shutting them as they went out. It was a long, hard slog across to the little cluster of buildings, which Rory was beginning to doubt were big enough to offer any assistance. The ground was muddy and uneven, and apparently there had been a pretty bad downpour recently as there were puddles all over. Also, the sun was beginning to sink beneath the horizon, which cast frustrating and odd shadows over the lumpy terrain. The sun had a green tinge to it, which made Rory think that it wasn't his sun. Not that that was anything new.

When they paused, about four-fifths of the way over, to catch their breath, Amy glanced over at the town distractedly. Her arms were so tired and sore they were shaking uncontrollably, and she wasn't really looking closely as this distracted her considerably (she would have some choice words to say to the Doctor after this!), so she was surprised to spot a small dark figure darting between the buildings. That one sighting of a presumed inhabitant made her realize that something had been bothering her ever since she first set eyes on the town.

"Rory, did you see that person move over there just now?"

"No, why?"

"Because there isn't anyone else moving around the streets or fields. Not one person. And only one building has lights on."

"Umm…" Rory said, "Well, depending on the circumstances that could be rather bad, yes. But we haven't got a lot of choice. We can't go back to the TARDIS."

Amy spotted the darting figure again, but this time it paused, seeming even at this distance to turn towards them. It stopped dead, as if in shock, and then began to run towards them.

"Uh-oh…" Amy breathed.

"What, is that bad?" Rory asked.

"I have no idea. Maybe we should just wait here and find out."

"You mean wait for a potentially hostile alien to reach us?"

"Well, if we stay it might eat us, and if we run we won't get help for the Doctor. I'd rather risk it, wouldn't you?" Amy reasoned.

So they stayed, and eventually the figure resolved into the shape of a girl, perhaps seventeen or so, who certainly seemed human enough. She reached them, panting, and glanced in a panicked way from one to the other.

"Viens, viens!" she cried. "Le soleil vas- la nuit- on ne peut pas rester dehors!" She was obviously very distressed.

"Wait, why isn't the TARDIS translating?" Amy asked.

"Maybe because the Doctor's unconscious…but wait a second…" Rory looked closer at the panicking girl.

"Parlez-vous anglais?" he asked.

"Wait, is that French? Is she speaking French?" Amy demanded.

"With a very strong accent," Rory answered.

The girl spoke again, this time in broken, accented English. "Inside-hurry-die! Bad!"

"What?" Amy asked incredulously.

"Um, she said die…" Rory said, shifting the stretcher in his arms, "Maybe we should listen, Amy…"

Not waiting for them to decide, the girl seized Amy's end of the stretcher and began pulling towards the village.

"Oi! Wait a second!" Amy grabbed her arm.

"Non! Il n'y a pas de temps! Il va commencer!"

"Amy, I think we should go with her," Rory said nervously. "I'm fairly sure she said something bad will happen when the sun goes down."

"Fine," Amy said, hands akimbo, "but when we get eaten it's your fault."

The three ran across the plain, their pace set by the furiously hauling girl, who steered them towards the large illuminated building. However, just before they entered the village Rory stopped. The girl yelled angrily and tugged on the stretcher, but Rory and Amy's eyes were fixed on the wood past the farms.

Some distance off, there was a strange light shining from the trees, a light accompanied by an odd buzzing noise and an electric prickling in the air. No, Rory decided, not buzzing. Whispering.

The girl was further terrified by this. She dropped the stretcher and ran, and the Doctor's limp frame was jolted heavily and almost rolled off. One of the poles, despite looking perfectly solid, actually snapped.

"Damn!" Rory swore, and he picked the Doctor up with Amy's help. They carried him bent between them towards the long building, where the girl was pounding frantically on the door. It opened, letting out a beam of light, and she practically flew inside. However, the person who had opened the door spotted Amy and Rory struggling thirty feet away, and a wiry older man sprang out and called to them, beckoning, "Ici, ici! Vite! Il viens!"

He helped them the last five feet, grabbing the Doctor in between them, and among the three of them they hauled him through the brightly lit opening. Someone slammed the door behind them, and the three time travelers found themselves locked in a strange room full of possible nonhumans, on an unknown planet, in an unknown time.

Again.

**Whoops, never mind what I said last chapter- I have a few chapters after this written, but I'll need them because the first day of school is tomorrow... so while I adjust to not sleeping anymore I'll just put one up every couple of days, then they'll update less frequently afterwards. Thanks for reading, and please review!**

**-Wolf**


	3. Three

**Ugh... high school. While I attempt to survive without sleep, here's chapter three. Hope you like it.**

**If I owned Doctor Who, would Ianto Jones be dead?**

CHAPTER THREE- Blinded

The room was somewhat large, seemingly about one-fourth of the structure. However, it was made considerably smaller by the fact that there were at least twenty-five people inside. They were ragged, terrified and exhausted looking, and they eyed the newcomers suspiciously. They were also distinctly whiffy, but Amy felt it would be better not to mention it, seeing as they were at their mercy.

Rory spoke first. "Thank you for letting us in," he said. "Please, our friend needs help. He's hurt."

The old man scrutinized them. "Ils sont anglaises," he said finally. "Ou est Jack?"

"Je suis ici, Pere David," a voice answered from the back of the room. A boy stood up. He was about sixteen, and tall, with dark hair and shadowy eyes. He picked his way through the huddled forms seated on the floor, making his way to the front, and knelt next to Amy.

"Hey," he said, in American-accented English. "Name's Jack. What happened?"

"We crashed," Amy answered. "He hit his head pretty hard, and it was bleeding too…" She looked at the Doctor's face, covered in blood, and marveled at how much older he looked asleep. How much sadder, and less like her energetic, bouncing friend. Maybe this was the real Doctor, the one who she'd seen surface sometimes, when he was angry. Or heartbroken.

"Gimme a second," Jack said. He got up and headed through a door at the back of the room, returning an uncomfortable minute later with a white box and a small metal device with a screen. Meanwhile, the whispering noise grew outside, and Rory noticed that the people were shrinking away from the windows.

"That's one of those medical scanner thingies," Amy realized. "I saw them before, with River and the angels…"

Jack placed it on the Doctor's chest, scowled, smacked it against the floor, and replaced it. This time it turned on, displaying several scrolling lists of information, some of which Rory was able to decode. Not that they were any use- all he could tell was that the Doctor's dual heartbeats were steady, and he gauged that each was going at about 110 beats a minute- whether that was fast or slow or perfectly normal he had no idea.

Suddenly, Jack shook his head oddly, as if trying to shake something off. He put a hand to one ear, but then quickly put it back when one of the other people in the room glanced at him.

Rory thought, _Now here's something suspicious_, but didn't say anything.

Jack whistled. "Here's one weird dude," he said. "Weird heartbeat, body temperature of sixty-one degrees! Your spaceship crashed, then?" He tapped the screen a few times, and the little machine hissed.

So they were definitely in the future. "Yup," Amy answered. "Not that that's anything unusual. As much as I love the TARDIS, it is a bit of an interstellar jalopy held together with duct tape and prayers."

"Don't diss my spaceship, Pond," a voice groaned. The Doctor shifted slightly, and then winced. "I've got a headache that could drive a Tusoris mad, and they haven't got any heads." He opened his eyes. "What's that noise?"

Further conversation was cut short by a sudden, blinding burst of light from all the windows at once. The noise, which had been growing steadily, exploded all around them, in snatches of voices and words that were just barely impossible to catch.

Five seconds later, the light faded. The sound returned to a gentle whispering, and everyone in the room blinked until they could clear their eyes of the spots that obscured their vision.

"What the bloody hell was that?" Rory swore. Amy slapped him.

"That's what we'd like to know," the boy Jack said darkly. "All we know is that it comes out of the woods, every night at sundown, and anyone who's not inside when it's dark, dies. No bodies, either."

"Really," the Doctor said, slowly pulling himself into a sitting position and leaning against the wall, waving off Rory's protests with a "don't worry, I heal faster than you". "How do you know they're dead? I mean, if you can't find their bodies?"

"I didn't say we didn't find 'em, poor guys. I just said that there's no body left. Just a burned black mark on the ground. And we hear them screaming, when the light catches them. Just one scream, always cut off, too."

"Interesting," the Doctor muttered. "How long has this been happening?"

The old man looked over at him sharply. "And when did you start speaking our language?" he asked in an insolent way, surprising Amy and Rory.

"When did you start speaking English?" Jack asked, surprised.

"Translation circuits!" the Doctor declared, clapping his hands together. "They don't work if I've been knocked out, or if I'm asleep."

"You sleep?" Amy asked.

"Watch it, Pond!" he chuckled, poking her. "So?"

"About three weeks. It started just a few days after I got here- I'm not from around here, you see. There used to be a hundred and fifty people in this town. We're all that's left." Jack shifted nervously. "We lost most of them on the first couple of nights, before we understood what happens if you go outside. They don't trust me. I'm a stranger, and it started right after I came, so…" His voice trailed off.

"I'm sure it had nothing to do with you," the Doctor said gently, putting his arm on Jack's shoulder.

"Wait, you were traveling alone?" Amy looked incredulous. "You're just a kid. Wasn't there anyone…" Rory elbowed her, and she broke off to glare at him. Then her blunder hit her, and she turned apologetically to Jack. "Oh, god, I'm sorry, I just…"

He waved it off. "No problem." He seemed remarkably nonchalant about it.

"Why didn't you call for help?" the Doctor asked. "You must have some kind of phone or transmitter."

"This is a packaged farming town," the girl who had found them said from her position a few feet away. "The colony government pays a hundred and fifty people to go and settle out in the middle of nowhere. Everything is mass produced, comes out of a kit. We'd never used our transmitter- we tried to, but it was a piece of junk. Caught on fire."

"Haven't you sent anyone for help?" Rory inquired.

"Yeah. They didn't come back, and we figured they must not have gotten far enough to escape the lights. We didn't want to lose anyone else, so we didn't try again."

"You saved our lives," Amy said. "Thank you."

"No problem," she smiled slightly. "I'm Grace."

"I'm Amy. This is my husband Rory and our friend the Doctor."

"What colony?" the Doctor asked suddenly. "Judging from the dialect and what you've said, I'd say early fifty-first century, but…"

"It's 5031," Jack said, his eyes lighting up. "Why? Are you Time Agents or something?"

"Does it matter?" Someone spoke sullenly from across the room. It was a man, maybe twenty-seven or so, with a few weeks' worth of stubble and a look of resignation in his eyes. "We're all going to die anyway, and now even if we don't get killed out there, we'll starve. Three more mouths to feed? We didn't have enough supplies anyway, and now the rain's destroyed the crops."

"That's Michael," Jack muttered. "Poor idiot. He and his brother were out late two days ago because he wouldn't head back without getting as much of the harvest as possible, and Cail didn't make it. Mind you, he's right. We're almost out of food."

"And what would you suggest we do, Michael?" the old man asked tiredly.

"I think we should throw the strangers out. All four of them," he snapped, eyeing Jack maliciously.

"No!" a woman stood up. "We may be desperate, but we're not murderers." Amy noticed tears in her eyes. "Nobody deserves that fate. And Jack's been doing more work than most of the adults. He's hardly a stranger."

"Sit down, son," someone else shouted. "We've all lost someone. You can't take it out on innocent strangers."

"Well, I'm glad his doesn't seem to be a popular opinion," Rory remarked to Jack, as the townspeople started arguing.

"It's that blasted Canadian politeness," Jack laughed, grinning at Grace, who scowled in his direction. Jack only grinned harder, and eventually she smiled as well. The Doctor noticed that they were holding hands. _Ah._

"Canadian?" Amy asked confusedly.

"Oh, of course- this is the colony of New Montreal!" the Doctor said suddenly. "Very nice place. Good cheese, if you don't mind that it's made with milk from a lizard. Well, I say a lizard- more like a big scaly-"

Amy cut him off. "Thank you, TMI."

"So, you're Jack?" the Doctor mused. "I used to have a friend named Jack, from this era too…" He suddenly leapt up. "Can I see that transmitter?"

"It's in the town hall, and we're stuck here in the storehouse until morning," Grace said slowly. "Why?"

"I just might be able to fix it for you," the Doctor answered, grinning like a child with a secret and pulling out his sonic screwdriver.

"Go and fix it, be my guest," Jack said, "go right out and get yourself fried, or vaporized, or eaten, or whatever it is those things do." He shrugged. "In the meantime, I'm going to sleep. We'll be back to work as soon as the sun comes up."

"Young Jack makes a good point," the old man, apparently some sort of head figure. "We should all rest. Darrin, you're on first watch, in case anything odd happens." A man with salt-and-pepper hair and a grim expression positioned himself by the window closest to the door.

Amy looked at the Doctor and recognized the look in his eyes. It was curiosity and determination both. He wasn't leaving until he'd solved this puzzle.

"Well," she sighed, "seeing as the TARDIS won't let us back in and you're obviously not going to take us to the Sugar Gardens on Babylonia before you've saved the world again, what would you like us to do?"

The Doctor looked over at the two of them. "Well, as I couldn't fix the cooling system, it'll take several days until the TARDIS cools down enough for us to get in it. For now, I'd suggest you two also get some rest. There'll be time enough to do some snooping when we don't get vaporized by some mysterious enemy if we poke our noses out the door."

"You forgot fried and eaten," Jack pointed out helpfully.

"Neither of which I imagine are pleasant," the Doctor agreed, settling down against one wall. "So, tomorrow."

Reluctantly, Amy and Rory found places on the floor to sleep. It was hard, dirty linoleum, but at least it was warm enough that they didn't need blankets. However, it was difficult to nod off when you were surrounded by twenty or so very grubby, restless people who were having as hard a time falling asleep as you. Eventually, Amy managed it, but just before she did, she saw the Doctor leaning on a windowsill and looking pensively out the window, chin in one hand, slowly tapping the sonic screwdriver on his knee with the other, contemplating the lights that went drifting past in the night.

**Okay... I should probably do this homework now...**

**Please review, because reviews make enthusiasm and enthusiasm makes inspiration which makes chapters which makes reviews...**


	4. Four

**I didn't upload this for, like, forever. Sorry. I was listening to Megurine Luka being awesome.**

**Plus I'm slowly dying of math poisoning.**

**I love this chapter's title. I'm a big fan of steampunk, and I've always loved those really long titles with the OR's in them that older novels and stories had.**

CHAPTER FOUR- A Wonderful Day For Death, OR, The TARDIS Crew Investigates

One would think that, after having woken up on dozens of different planets, in hundreds of time zones, scattered all around this universe, one would stop waking up with the rather disconcerting feeling of not knowing where one is.

Nope.

This is something along the lines of what went through Amy's head as she woke up the next morning, although her thoughts contained considerably more angry mutterings and, as her mother would say, 'language'. She flopped over onto her back and stared at the ceiling for about thirty seconds until she remembered what had happened.

Okay. Stuck with no TARDIS in a town where you can't go outside at night. Today was snooping day.

Amy sat up, her messy hair falling into her eyes, and saw that most of the people who had been sleeping there were gone, although there were still five or six others still asleep in the room. She couldn't see Rory, the Doctor, or the two kids they'd met last night anywhere. Morning sunlight streamed into the room from the windows.

She got up and slipped her shoes on, running her fingers through her hair until her reflection in the window glass looked vaguely presentable. The door was unlocked, and she got her first real look at the town.

There were about sixty buildings in the town, most of which stood empty and unused- the houses of the dead, probably. They were mostly made of metal, simple box shapes that gleamed in the sun despite their coating of dust. It wasn't hard to see why they'd holed up in what appeared to be a storage building. Only three of the buildings actually had glass windows- the one she'd just exited, a similar, larger construction across the dirty street, and a big building about a hundred yards away that appeared to be the only two-story place in town. The rest of the houses had metal shutters instead of glass.

She was looking around for some clue as to where her boys could be when the door of the larger of the two longhouses swung open, letting out a whiff of animal smell and the sound of snorting as well as Grace, swinging a bucket of- Amy looked closer and decided she didn't want to know. She raised an arm and waved, and Grace smiled, set the bucket down and walked over, dusting her hands off on her trousers.

"Are you looking for those friends of yours?" she asked. "They'll probably be in the town hall- the big one. That's where the transmitter is. We tried to wake you up, but you punched your husband in the face without even opening your eyes and they were too afraid to try again."

Amy laughed. "I have no memory whatsoever of that happening," she confessed. "Honestly, you'd think they'd know better by now."

A harsh, bellowing roar sounded from the building, and Grace glanced back at it. "Oops, I have to run. Good luck with your machine and whatnot." She dashed back through the door, closing it behind her.

Amy didn't see many people on the way over to the town hall. She guessed from what she'd heard the previous night that they were trying to find food. It seemed to her it was all a bit strange that you'd have people who farmed by hand in the 51st century, or that they didn't have some sort of food synthesizer thingy. She supposed they could be hippies or something, although that sounded even more unlikely. She caught a glimpse through the houses as she went of a field covered in little green bushes, and of the forest beyond it.

The town hall was cool and dusty inside, unlit except for beams of sunlight filled with lazily drifting dust particles. The Doctor was bent over a blocky steel machine in the corner, and Rory was seated next to him holding a huge tangle of wires. They glanced up as Amy entered, swishing her hand through the light to make the little dots swirl and dance.

"I'd stay away from those if I were you," the Doctor said. "They're not all as harmless as they seem."

"They're just dust," Amy laughed at his absurdity. "How's it going with the thingy?"

"It's a piece of useless rubbish," the Doctor said, kicking the box angrily with a hollow CLANG. "With a couple of weeks and some ingenuity, I might just be able to build a working transmitter with the bits they made it out of, but put together like this it won't do anything. And anyway, by then the TARDIS will be working again. Most likely."

"So there's no point in attempting to fix it?" Rory asked.

"None whatsoever."

"And that means I can put these wires down now."

The Doctor gave a long-suffering sigh. "Yes, Rory, it does." He stuck his sonic screwdriver into his jacket pocket and sat on the machine. "So that's one option down."

"What's option two?" Amy asked hopefully.

The Doctor somehow materialized a ridiculous deerstalker hat from nowhere. "We investigate!" he declared, jamming the hat onto his head.

"Yahoo," Rory said glumly.

"Oh, come on, stupidhead," Amy said, grabbing his arm and pulling him up. "This is the fun bit- after the crash and before the monsters. Enjoy it while you can."

When they left the building, Amy having already confiscated the Doctor's hat ('but that's a Sherlock Holmes hat, Pond! Sherlock Holmes is cool!'), Jack was leaning against the building across from it, watching them. He pushed himself up and sauntered over with his hands in his pockets.

"Hey," he greeted them.

"Shouldn't you be out helping the rest of them?" Rory asked him. "In the fields, I mean."

"Nah," came the answer. "Growing shirrin takes know-how. The people here were all trained in advance, but I'm not one of them, remember?"

"Aah," the Doctor said suddenly, "Now all that makes a lot more sense. Amy, Rory, remember what they said about the rain ruining everything, and have you noticed-"

"They don't have any machinery," Amy interrupted. "Yes, I have noticed, actually."

He grinned, and clapped his hands together. "They're growing shirrin," he said. "One of the most lucrative crops of the period. It's used in everything from health food to medicine to beauty products to spaceship fuel. All very expensive, of course, as it's nearly impossible to grow. The fruits are too delicate to machine-harvest- they have to be picked by hand, and it's not the fruit you want anyway. It's the coating. You see, the fruit has this sort of dusty stuff on it just before it's ripe, and that's the important part, the bit used in all those things. The rest of the plant is useless. If it rains, it's all washed away, and there goes your profit. That's why this is a non-machine area, too far out in the wilderness for any pollution from the big biocities to reach them."

"Well, that's one mystery solved by the TARDIS detective squad," Rory said. "How many does that leave?"

"Three," the Doctor said. "What are those lights, why are they killing people and how do we stop them?"

"Four," Amy added as her stomach rumbled. "Where's breakfast?

"I can get you guys something if you want," Jack offered. "It's not much. All we have is cheese and some of the food we're growing in another field. When we lost so many people, we weren't able to pick everything in time and a lot of it went rotten. You're supposed to be able to send for emergency supplies if that happens, but of course, the transmitter isn't working."

Rory remembered the Doctor's cheese comment from the night before. Suspiciously, he asked, "What's it made out of? No, wait, never mind. I don't want to know."

An hour later, after they had managed to hunt down some breakfast (the Doctor had discovered some energy bars in his pocket, but neither of his friends had been willing to eat them after Amy had glanced at the ingredients list- not to mention the expiration date), the threesome decided that they should probably head up to the fields and ask around about the lights. Jack had apparently made up his mind that tagging along with them was the most interesting thing he'd had to do in a long time.

"Why are you following us?" Amy asked him, exasperated.

"You're the oddest people I've ever met," he replied. "Watching you is fascinating."

Amy decided to take this as an insult and stomped along huffily. Rory accepted in a good-natured way that yes, they were pretty odd. The Doctor just laughed.

"So, Jack," he chuckled, ruffling Jack's already messy hair, "where can we get a little information about this problem of yours?"

"Well…" Jack said, "There are only two people here who have been outside at sundown. There's Michael, who you've already met."

"I'm fairly sure he won't help us," Rory said, "seeing as he wanted to kill us."

"Probably not," Amy said sarcastically.

"Then there's Soledad," Jack continued. "I'm not sure whether she'll talk to you, buddy. She was apparently a quiet one even before all this. I've never even heard her speak. A couple of weeks ago, she spent the whole night locked in a house on her own. If you can actually talk to her, then she might be able to tell you something."

"Okay, again with the crazy silent woman," Rory stopped for a second. "You do realize that every time this comes up we get in more trouble than we're already in?"

"Just what do you guys do, anyway?" Jack asked. "If you are Time Agents, you're the weirdest Time Agents I've ever seen. Not that I've met any of them."

"Whatever a Time Agent is," Rory said, "that's not us. We're sort of… travelers. Sight-seeing."

"You're using a time machine for tourism?" Jack asked sarcastically.

"What better use could there be?" the Doctor declared, throwing his arms to the sky. "All the universe, all of time, right there at your fingertips. We can see anything, go anywhere, visit anywhen. There's no life like it."

"No kidding," Jack said. "I always thought time travel sounded cool." He kicked the ground. "That's why I'm traveling. I want to see everything I can. You've only got so many years, you know? I want to make mine count."

"Ahh…" the Doctor said softly. Amy looked up at him sharply. "What?"

"Oh, nothing," he said, waving his hand dismissively. "Just thinking. So, onwards! To this Soledad character. Where would she be?"

"In the far north field, probably," Jack said. "She stays off alone."

Amy hung back. _He knows something,_ she thought. _He thinks there's something up with this Jack kid. And I agree with him. I'll have to keep a close eye on both of them, then._

The sky above had darkened from the early morning sun, as clouds blanketed the sky in a blue-gray, all-enveloping field. The wind had picked up, too, but it was still a mild breeze, not enough to distract from the thick summer heat.

Soledad Fiore Dubois raised her head and brushed the sweat from her forehead with one dirty hand, leaving a streak of mud. She dug the shovel into the hard earth one more time, and leaned on it. She didn't bother to turn around to speak to the people behind her.

"Hey, Soledad?" The voice was that young boy's. Jack. She liked him. He stood up for himself. "There are some people- the strangers from last night. They'd like to talk to you."

She didn't answer. She had seen these people the night before. Soledad was an old woman, and she had learned over time how to judge a person's character by the way they held themselves, the look in their eyes. The girl was a strong one, that was for sure. One of the men meant nothing much to her- he had many secrets, and he was somehow ancient, far older than her. But those things were none of her concern. It was the third who caught her eye. He looked plain enough, but inside she could see the compassionate soul. The fiery love for the girl, and the sadness that even though the rings they wore indicated she loved him back, even without reservation, he would always in a way be second to the man he stood next to. A piece of the girl's heart would never belong to him.

Soledad pitied him. She knew what he was going through.

"Hello," the dark one said. "I'm the Doctor. I was wondering- if you don't mind- could you tell us anything about those lights?"

She turned, slowly, and looked at them. She did not intend to answer. They could not help her. She could not help them.

The mousy one, the interesting boy, was looking at her in a strange, sad way. It was unnerving, as if he could see into her as well as she could into him.

"Please?" the Doctor tried again. "We really are trying to help out here, but unless we can get some info on this thingy you have going on, then we'll be about as much use as a hedgehog in a tuba." He paused for a second. "No, wait a minute…"

"What was your daughter's name?"

In shock, she wheeled to the younger man. His eyes were still full of concern. How could he know?

"What are you talking about, Rory?" his wife demanded.

"You're wearing a ring on a cord around your neck," he said softly. "A wedding ring. It's much too small for you, and being that small it probably didn't belong to a bloke. You wouldn't keep it unless it was important to you, so the person was close. It could be your mother, but it's shiny, almost new. It isn't recent, but it's not that old. The most likely choice would seem to be your daughter."

Her hand went to the ring, and she continued to stare blankly at him.

"There has to be a reason you have the ring. If she'd broken up with her husband, why would you be wearing it? I figure-" he looked very sad again "-I'm sorry. She's dead, isn't she."

It wasn't a question. Soledad suddenly remembered that laughing face, her running around when she was little, her hair blown back carelessly into her eyes. "Celesta…" she whispered.

Rory stepped closer. "I'm so, so sorry," he said to her, taking one of her limp hands. His friends stared in shocked silence.

A single tear fell from her eye. Her voice was harsh from long unuse. "She was sick. It came so fast… One day, she was as happy as ever, the next she was gone. Wasted away in only days…" The tears came thick and fast now. "I couldn't stand it. I left. Eight years ago now."

"That's why you're here, isn't it," he said. "To get away from the memories. Listen, I understand. I know how much it hurts to lose someone. But I don't think your daughter would have wanted you to be alone."

Suddenly, on impulse, Rory hugged the old woman. She pulled back for a moment, and then embraced him.

A moment later, she stepped away awkwardly. "Thank you," she said. "I can only help you so much. Firstly, the lights came out of the forest. No one goes in there much. The native animals are too dangerous."

"Alrighty then!" the Doctor exclaimed. "Look in the creepy dark forest! Sounds like fun, eh?"

"One more thing," Soledad said. "The whispers. The words you can almost understand. I made out just one, when I was locked in that house so close to them."

"What?" Rory asked.

"Lost," Soledad told him.

"Thank you." He took her hand again. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," she said. "You're right."

"How did you do that, Rory?" The Doctor asked as they walked away.

"What? Oh, the ring. Well, I guess I've been reading a lot of Sherlock Holmes lately, so…"

"No," the Doctor said. "That's not how you did it." He stopped, and turned to face Rory. "It was something much deeper than that, Rory Williams."

"I- I've seen people before, working at the hospital," he stammered. "People with that look in their eyes. The ones who had lost everything and everyone and couldn't see the point anymore." His eyes softened. "I tried my best to help them. She was the exact same. I just wish I could help her."

"I think you did, Rory." The Doctor contemplated his friend for a moment, and then embraced him. "Oh, you are brilliant, you are!" he declared happily into the other's ear. "Brilliant, amazing Rory! I just love you, you know that?"

"Oi!" Amy interrupted. "Only I get to hug him." She did so enthusiastically, causing Rory, whose face was already bright red, to squirm. "And I agree completely."

Rory blushed even harder. "Thanks, I appreciate that totally, but could you please quit hugging me now? I can't breathe."

Amy let go. "Could you not breathe because I was hugging you, or because all your blood has gone straight into your face?" she teased, bonking his nose with one finger.

"Hey!" Rory turned to the Doctor and Jack. "Quit laughing!"

The Doctor managed to regain his composure (Jack continued laughing hysterically). "Okay," he said, adjusting his bowtie. "Interview stage of investigation completed. Next step- the scene of the crime!" He pulled a gigantic magnifying glass out of one coat pocket. "Jack, you said there were marks left where the victims had been. Are there any left after the rain?"

"Yeah," Jack shuddered and grimaced. "They're burned right into the ground."

"Then let's find one." He strode forward.

"Wait!" Rory put in. "Didn't Soledad say to look in the forest?"

The Doctor wheeled around and looked at Rory in a 'you're thick aren't you' way. "Well, if you'd like to go charging into the den of the beast, so to speak, without knowing anything of the nature of this phenomenon other than it's sparklier and worse for you than Stephanie Meyer's vampires, go right ahead," he said darkly. "Take Amy, too! Get both of you killed." His face turned to one of disgust. "Ugh, Twilight." He kept walking, and they followed.

"Exactly my opinion," Amy added. "Of Twilight, I mean. That girl is such a whiny brat. I mean, two hot guys and all she does is whine about wanting to be dead." She glanced at Rory. "What?"

"Oh, nothing," he muttered. "I hate vampires. " The 'and when the Doctor treats me like an idiot' was implied but not spoken.

"Edward is probably a fish too," Amy said pensively. "That or a leech. I mean, he sparkles in the sun and sucks blood- that's what leeches do, right?"

"He's a goth disco ball," Rory laughed.

Jack stared at them. "You two are so weird," he said in awe.

This sent them off into a fresh round of laughter.

"Come along, Ponds!" the Doctor called from around a bend in the dirt path. "Adventure awaits!"

**There you go! I've finished chapter five already but it's a bit short so I'm expanding it first.**

**Please be my first reviewer and make me feel better :(**


	5. Five

**Shostakovich- thanks for the compliment and the review! It really made my previously cruddy day :) Also, Jack- LOL**

**PS. Thanks to the people who reviewed my story A Walk By a River, too.**

**I can't be the person who owns Doctor Who- I don't have an awesome British accent. I have a Canadian accent... eh?**

CHAPTER FIVE- Adventure...?

The Doctor bent over the charred black spot in the dust, scrutinizing it through the magnifying glass. It was circular in shape, like a standing person from above. Probably what it was, he realized. Like a shadow frozen in time, showing the way this poor, innocent person had stood in their last moments. He scraped his fingers through the black powder, and pocketed some.

Out came the sonic, which he swept over the area a few times. The Doctor checked the readings. A "Hmmm…" escaped him, and he stuck the screwdriver back into his jacket pocket. Then he leaned down and licked the ground.

"Oh, that is just disgusting!" Amy's voice came from behind him. "Don't you realize there's a possibility that's all that's left of the body of a dead person?"

"Quite, Pond," he murmured. The Doctor sniffed the mark cautiously. A faint smell rose from it, but not the expected burned scent. It was something familiar…

He leaned forward and sniffed it, and then jerked back in surprise. He hadn't smelled that perfume in years… Why would this spot, a scene of death on a world and time neither of them had visited, smell like...

"Ohhhh…" he said quietly. "Interesting…"

"Are you okay? You looked… I don't know, shocked. What did you figure out?" Rory asked.

The Doctor stood. "Question one, I'm fine. Just something odd. Do me a favor, Pond, and come sniff this?"

"What?" Amy recoiled at the thought of sniffing a dead person.

"Please?" The Doctor looked at her, and she conceded reluctantly. Gingerly lowering her head to the ground, she inhaled.

"Weird…" she sat back on her knees. "It smells like my aunt's gingerbread." She cocked her head. "We used to make it together, whenever I was feeling bad… It always made me feel better."

"No wonder," the Doctor said. "That spot smells like something from the past of whoever happens to be mad enough to sniff it, to my nearest guess. That's why I smelled her perfume…" he shook his head.

Putting aside her questions about that statement for later, along with her suspicions about Jack, Amy asked, "And question two?"

"It's not an occurrence," the Doctor stated grimly. "It's a being. And the sonic picked up an unusual amount of radiation, the same kind as is put out by this world's sun." He indicated vaguely upwards. "But it shouldn't be able to do this. In fact, getting smashed with this much of it would probably raise your IQ a few points. Oh, and make it impossible to get intoxicated."

Amy was horrified. "But… who would purposely do that to anyone? I mean, kill them in such a horrible way, not prevent them from getting drunk."

"Or what," Jack said darkly.

The Doctor pointed at him. "Precisely! Is this a conscious act by a sentient being, or a predator of some sort? And which is worse?"

"Well, they're both pretty bad," Rory laughed sarcastically. "Eaten or murdered? Which would I prefer?"

"Aw," Amy said to him consolingly, "don't worry. I won't let the scary monster get you." She leaned over and kissed him.

"I don't know which is worse," he said despairingly to Jack. "That I'm in danger of being eaten by monsters or that my wife would probably beat them off me."

The boy nodded in sympathy.

The Doctor put his arms around their shoulders. "Ah well!" he said cheerfully. "I think having all of space and time a moment away is worth a few monsters."

"A moment away when the ship is actually working," Amy pointed out acidly, shrugging his arm off. "Which is perhaps one-tenth of the time. Remember Rio?"

"Rio was one of my bad moments," he admitted. "Still, look at all the fun trips we had trying to get there!"

"I died trying to get to Rio," Rory reminded him.

"What?" Jack looked at him incredulously.

Rory sighed in a long-suffering way. "I died, was erased from existence, and spent two thousand years as a plastic Roman. Long story."

Jack whistled. "I can tell."

"Anyway," the Doctor continued, "our investigation, as it were, has led us to one conclusion. These beings, whatever they are, are hiding where?" Amy raised her hand, and he pointed at her flamboyantly. "Yes, Pond?"

"The creepy dark forest full of monsters," Amy pronounced triumphantly.

"Oh," the Doctor said slowly, putting his hand down. "I hadn't thought of it like that." He cheered up immediately. "However, that only makes it more fun! Off to the woods, to grandmother's house or something like that."

"Wheee!" Amy punched the air. "Lots of fun and running!"

"Why is your idea of fun so different from mine?" Rory moaned miserably. "Why can't we just wait this out?"

"Because this way is more interesting," Amy laughed. She began following the Doctor, who had headed in the exact wrong direction.

Jack patted Rory's shoulder comfortingly as they jogged after the two others. "Cheer up, mate. Girls are just like that."

"Tell me about it," Rory muttered.

Amy caught up to the Doctor and grabbed his sleeve. "What are you not telling us?" she demanded.

"Obviously I'm not telling you," he said, grinning infuriatingly. She punched him.

The four of them were less than five minutes out towards the woods when the brooding skies fulfilled their threat and it began to rain.

"Aw, crap," Amy said angrily as the rain began to hiss down. "Is it supposed to make my clothes smoke? Ow!" A large drop rolled down her face, leaving a trail of angry red skin behind.

"I might have forgotten to mention that the rain here is highly acidic," Jack said apologetically, turning back towards the town. "Well, there goes today's adventure. Let's get back before we start melting."

"When am I going to get my adventure?" Amy huffed as they jogged through the main street, seeing Grace standing in the open door of the longhouse and beckoning for them. "It's barely even one and we're already done adventuring for today."

"Who says we're done?" the Doctor said as they rushed in and Grace shut the door behind them. They went and sat in the corner, watching several of the others in the room distributing an early lunch to everyone. Rory was offered a hunk of rather noxious cheese, but turned it down politely.

"Reinstate interview phase of investigation," the Doctor said absently, biting a corner off a stick of gum and wedging it in his teeth. "Have I mentioned that I like gum? Gum is cool."

Amy rolled her eyes. "But I thought the only other one who had been outside was that Michael guy. The jerkface."

"Yes," the Doctor said, jumping up suddenly, "and I'll handle that later. For now, Ponds, I'd like the two of you to ask everyone in the room to tell you everything. Every detail. The most insignificant thing might save us all. Grace, would you mind helping?"

"I'd be glad to," she said earnestly. "I haven't been able to do a thing since all this started. I want to stop being a burden to everyone."

"You're not a burden," Jack objected. "You're the most useful person in the room! You were the only one who knew when to pick any of the food."

"I was just lucky," she said, looking down and blushing.

"Well," Rory said, "might as well get started."

Jack turned to the Doctor. "Well, what am I doing? For that matter, what are you doing?"

"Ah." The Doctor clapped him on the shoulder. "Well, Jack, I would very much like you to show me the storerooms in this building."

"Dunno why you want to come back here," Jack said, unlocking the door. The room was dark, with unsettlingly bare shelves lining the walls. He flicked a light switch, and the Doctor followed him in. He closed the door, and, pulling the sonic from his pocket, locked the door.

"What are you doing that for?" Jack asked. A hint of nervousness was barely detectable in his voice.

"To ensure that we're left alone," the Doctor said, pulling a crate up and sitting on it. He indicated the stack of similar boxes. "Have a seat, Jack."

Jack sat reluctantly.

"Now," the Doctor said, leaning back on the wall, "I've got a few questions for you."

"Like what?"

The Doctor folded his hands. "First point: when we first met you, you said you were a stranger. When Amy thought you had been with someone who had been killed, you allowed her to believe it, but you weren't telling the truth. You were traveling alone. I'm not sure why.

"Second point: Amy tells me while the whispering was going on, you acted strangely and covered your ears, but stopped when someone looked at you. Later, you seemed afraid that these lights might have something to do with you. Conclusion? You heard something else, something you're afraid connects you to all of this." Jack attempted to speak, but the Doctor stopped him.

"Let me finish. The third point is likely nothing to bear on the current conversation, so I'll leave it for later." He looked at the teen. "Correct?"

Jack glared at him, and sighed. "I ran away," he said quietly. "It's a long story, and one I'd rather not tell. I haven't got a family anymore. It's still my home, and I'll go back to it, but… after what happened, I need to stay away for a while."

The Doctor put his arm over Jack's shoulders. "I can understand running away," he replied, "but the answer to the second thing is more important."

Jack looked searchingly into the Doctor's eyes. "Can I trust you?" he asked finally.

"I'm the Doctor," he answered. "Of course you can."

"When they come," Jack said, "I don't hear whispering. That's why they don't all trust me. At first, I couldn't understand what they were talking about. When I realized what was happening, I played along, but they already suspected me of having something to do with this. And for all I know, I do.

"It's so beautiful, Doctor. And it wants me to come. It takes every bit of me not to follow it. It's like every lovely thing in the world decided to talk inside my ears, and I _want_ it. It's wonderful, Doctor.

"The music."

**A bit short, but important. There will be more...**

**Eventually.**


	6. Six

**I don't know. Maybe I'd like this chapter more if it hadn't taken me _four weeks_ to write and then I wrote four-fifths of it last night. Maybe I'd like it more if my writing style didn't keeping jumping all over the place like an angry jackrabbit. Although I did discover that apparently the X-Files works much better to help me write than music. Now I have an excuse to watch it all the time!**

CHAPTER SIX- Previously Undisclosed Information

The Doctor stared at Jack for a moment. "Music?" he whispered.

Jack repeated, "Music like… like a chorus of angels or an entire world's worth of birds all singing one song together. Amazing music."

"Don't you realize, Jack?" The Doctor grabbed his shoulders and stared into his eyes. "That changes _everything_."

"You can't tell anyone," Jack begged him. "They'll blame me. They'll think I'm insane. Please, Doctor!"

The Time Lord sat back. After a moment of silence, he said, "Just promise me you won't hide anything else."

Jack nodded sincerely.

"Alrighty then!" The Doctor stood up. "We might as well see what the Ponds are doing."

* * *

><p>"So… you grow cabbages?" Rory said, straining to avoid boredom in his voice.<p>

"Not just cabbages," the old man stressed. "_Hybrid_ cabbages."

"But you didn't notice anything odd just before this started?" Amy asked.

"There was an awful lot of cabbage slugs that month," the old man said contemplatively.

Rory slid away. "Well, thank you. That's… very, very helpful. I'm sure that'll be very important. We'll just be going now."

"Them cabbage slugs are never a good sign…"

Amy huffed angrily. "No one here is doing us any good. We're all trapped in a life-or-death situation and all they do is act like nothing has happened half the time- and when they do act reasonably for the situation, they're blaming us!"

"Well, we're all a bit confused," Grace said. "Most of them figure as long as we're all inside at night, nothing's wrong. They're focusing on the fields so we don't starve." She grimaced. "Load of stinking morons."

"Agreed," Rory muttered. He leaned against the wall, noting the guy named Michael, the one who had objected to taking them in, watching them from the opposite corner. What a creep. He shivered and turned away.

"There are the Doctor and Jack," Grace noted, gesturing towards the opening storage room door. "Wonder what that was all about. He do that mysterious thing often?"

"A better question would be does he ever not do it," Amy said. "And I don't think so."

"Any luck?" the Doctor asked cheerfully, sauntering over.

"Not unless cabbages are a sign of alien invasion, no," Rory sighed.

The Doctor glanced over at the other side of the room. "Asked our friend Michael yet?" he said quietly.

"No," Amy said bluntly. "For some reason I didn't feel like it. I wonder why."

"Well, then," the Doctor replied brightly, "let's go ask him then." He was jerked back by all four of his friends.

"Doctor!" Amy hissed. "Kind of a psychopathic maniac that wants us dead!"

"When has that ever stopped him?" Rory asked her.

"I get the feeling you guys have a difficult time keeping him alive," Grace muttered.

Amy snorted. "And we don't always manage it, either. Thank heaven for time travel."

"Don't I get any input?" the Doctor complained. "Contrary to popular belief, I do actually know what I'm doing most of the time." He glanced back and forth between their faces. "Alright, some of the time. Just trust me on this one, okay?"

"When we die, it'll be your fault," Jack grumbled. "He hates me too. Actually, I don't think he likes anybody. The guy lost people, yeah, but…" His voice caught slightly. "The rest of us did too."

"I lost my parents," Grace said suddenly. She ducked her head. "Sorry, I'm not sure why I…"

"Oh, god," Amy said. "That's… I'm so sorry, I mean…"

"S'alright," Grace replied. "I've sort of… come to terms with it, you know?" Despite her words, the ghosts of unshed tears hung in her eyes.

The Doctor took her hand and didn't say anything, but he smiled softly at her and she knew what he was saying. His old, old eyes were understanding, and deep in beneath the exterior Grace just barely caught a glimpse of the empathy that can only be gained when someone else has lived through the same thing. She nodded, and slipped her hand away.

Rory noticed the silent exchange, and approved. Amy also smiled at this, her raggedy Doctor comforting another lost soul. Jack, however, broke in, "Are you really going to convince us to do something and then stand here talking about something else entirely? If we have to talk to the jerk, let's get it over with." He walked off, and Amy stared at him in disbelief.

"Did he really just say that? I mean, really? I've got half a mind to go and tell him-"

"He's just a boy. It's in his genes," Grace snorted.

Amy laughed loudly. "You are way too young to be talking like that."

"I'm fifteen!" Grace complained. "I'm not _that_ short. You're barely older than me and you're _married_, for heaven's sakes."

Amy raised an eyebrow at her. "I'm twenty-two, Grace. Seven years older. And yes, you are old enough. Sorry. I can't help it if you're only five-foot-three."

"Five-foot-six!" Grace said. Then they noticed that the boys were already halfway across the room, and hurried after them.

Michael leaned against the wall, head back and arms crossed. He closed his eyes and exhaled loudly as the Doctor and his friends made their way towards him. Everything about him spoke of nonchalant hatred.

It was the Doctor who spoke first, in his usual offhand way. "Hello. If you don't mind, I'd like to ask you a few questions."

The man chuckled. His French accent lent an edge to the sarcasm in his voice. "And if I do mind?"

"I'll ask them anyway. You probably just won't answer. And then, if you have anything I need to know that you won't tell me, people will die. Like your brother did."

Michael swiveled and punched the Doctor in the face, sending him reeling backwards. "Shut up," he hissed. "You have no idea what you're talking about."

The Doctor felt his jaw gingerly. "I do, actually," he replied in an even voice, without a sign of anger. "I do know what it feels like to lose people. And if you would help me, then I can stop whoever killed the people you care about."

The other man looked at him. "Do you know why I left the city?" he said finally. "People hardly have a life anymore. You can't care about anyone, or anything, because you lose everything in the end. Even yourself. Your own identity is bled away into the anonymity of the crowd. I left all that I had ever known in order to live the hard way, the real way, out here. I wanted a better life for me and for my brother and for everyone here. A life where we are all real people. Now Cail is dead, and all of us are just dead men walking. And here you come, to speed up the process. We barely had a chance to survive. And now we have none. And there is nothing you or your questions or your little friends can do about it."

"Wow," the Doctor said simply. "Well, I can tell you feel very strongly about your beliefs. Not that I agree about anything you said. I can get you out of here. Everyone in this room. Safe and alive. All I need is time and answers. And if you can help me, then we have that much more of a chance. Cross my hearts."

"Well, at least if you're a fool you're an honest one," Michael muttered. "And you seriously think you can help us in any way?"

"I can't bring your brother back," the Doctor said. "I can't bring back the parents and the siblings and the children. But all I want is to make sure that no one else has to die. I have a bigger-on-the-inside time machine and spaceship that will be working in a few days. I can _save these people_, I can get every one of these people out, but only if you help me. I can tell you care about them. Let me help them. Let me help you."

"I don't like you," Michael said. "But maybe if I tell you you'll go away. Alright, I do have something you might like to know. It just shows how much we're all doomed."

"I can help you," the Doctor said. "If you'd tell me."

"Two nights before this," Michael muttered. "Before it all started, I mean. There was a light in the woods, like a sunrise but bright gold. Lasted for about ten minutes. I thought it was the weird atmosphere on this planet. But now I know what it was. There are always rumors about nonallied nonhuman invasion. Only ever rumors. And now it's us. Just my luck."

"Hardly rumors," Jack said very quietly.

"Thank you," the Doctor said, inclining his head. He turned abruptly and walked off, leaving his friends to follow him confusedly.

"Well, that was useful," Rory said. "The same tip as we got from the much nicer old woman. But with more insults and a French accent."

"Actually, Roranicus Pond, it was possibly the most useful thing I've heard so far," the Doctor said. "What happened to all the Sherlock…iness we saw earlier with said nice old woman? You need to think of the possibilities. Connect the facts. Use the little gray noodle-y things you've got in that thick human head of yours."

"The woods, huh?" Amy said, hoping to gloss over the insults and avoid a squabble between the boys. "Well, the sky seems to have decided that it'll be tomorrow. What do you think we'll find?"  
>"If we're lucky? Answers." The Doctor said. "If not, a large number of angry, hungry beasties will probably attempt to have us for tea. With badly made coffee rather than actual tea. And no biscuits. Speaking of biscuits, anybody care for a Jammy Dodger?"<p>

"As long as no Daleks show up, I'm game," Amy said. "C'mon boys, Grace. If we're stuck standing around in here let's have some fun."

"Did you notice that no one paid any attention to that argument? Despite the punching in the face? By the way, Doctor, are you alright?"

"Oh, yes, Jack," the Doctor said bitterly. "Ask me how I am now. As an afterthought. Very nice of you. Very much a thing a friend would do."

"Aw, cheer up, Doctor," Amy said. "There's always tomorrow."

**I really couldn't dislike this chapter more, but hopefully other people won't loathe it quite as much. By the way, thank you to all the people who misguidedly have favorited my terrible writing. You make my day, every day :)**


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